Customer Reviews

How I Became Stupid

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I wanted very much to like this book. I had read reviews of it, and it seemed to mesh very much with how I have been feeling lately. However, when I read it, I was very disappointed. I felt like it was the outline of a better book, and wasn't very well fleshed out. The main character had very little insight into his own behavior, and was somewhat of a hypocrite. For example, there are many descriptions of Antoine stealing from and cheating people, and yet he goes on and on about how few moral people are left in the world. This can work as a literary device, but I got the impression from the way it was written that the author didn't have a lot of insight into Antoine's behavior either.

I mainly thought that the book was very lazily written. There are some potentially interesting supporting characters that are given short shrift. For example, Antoine has a friend named Aas that, due to a childhood trauma, only speaks in verse. Page doesn't ever give us a sample of this verse, only says things like, "In a magnificent sonnet, Aas told Antoine...." I can hear echoes of my old writing teachers: Show me, don't tell me. The book is replete with examples of this.

It was not entirely bad. There are some very interesting ideas in the book, and some phrasings that really caught my attention. The first paragraph is great. However, these shining moments were the exception and not the rule. My overall impression was that this was a book written by a very young author (he was in his mid-twenties when it was published, I believe) who had some great ideas that he was eager to get on paper. He got them on paper as quickly as he could, and couldn't be bothered with the details or internal consistency because they just slowed him down. Unfortunately, no agent or editor along the way asked him to slow down and fill in the blanks. I'd like to see Page, who obviously has unguided talent, rewrite this book when he is ten years older.

Antoine, a twenty-five year old Frenchman, wants the finer things in life. He decrees that he shall no longer be burdened by intelligence, critical analysis, or culture. Instead, he wants to be stupid.

Now, this may seem like an idiotic thought, but to Antoine it makes sense because his attempts at becoming an alcoholic failed, after only a half-glass, and his suicide instructor accidentally led him away from the morbid path. Go figure.

Overall, this book is a glimpse, as one reviewer put it, into Antoine's "wonderful existential journey." Not too deep mind you, and that is one of the main faults. This book, sensibly enough, is especially alluring to the reader who finds that he or she relates to Antoine - pre-stupidity attempts. In this sense we feel his pain, and see a tidbit of ourselves. However, as previously mentioned, this book is short and does not offer us the expanded view, into either ourselves or existentialism in general, that we might have wanted.

(Also especially poignant for the Huckabees fan)

"How I became stupid" is a gracefully narrated tale of a man afflicted by his intelligence. As the character tries to escape his curse by becoming stupid he learns of his own limitations, the true value of stupidity and the importance of friendship. This type of book teaches philosophy by showing rather than telling, and it does so in a hugely entertaining and funny fashion. At fewer than 200 pages and written in a very straightforward way, the book is a great, great afternoon read.

This small book is a dazzling journey from the hallowed halls of academic life, wherein the main character is somewhat chronically depressed, to the bright, shiny corporate world outside (where he is breifly less depressed). Although the book does not resolve the Big Questions of existence that it brings up,I'm not sure that resolution is the point here. Page makes a brilliantly foray into the long literary conversation about the true meaning of happiness, joy, and the pursuit of knowledge. It makes a highly entertaining, smart afternoon read.

This book was almost too clever with friends named Aas (who can only speak in poetry and glows in the dark) and Ganja (who always has some "herbal" remedy"). Still I was enjoying it until the ending which left a lot to be desired. The trip was more enjoyable than the destination. It was translated from French so maybe it's a French thing and I just don't get it.

As I read Martin Page's soliloquy on the penalties of intelligence, I felt almost frightened by some similarities to recent thought patterns of my own. Despite this, I enjoyed the book.

The protagonist of the story is bedeviled by his own understanding, and he suffers from the curse of the self-aware: his existence is bourgois and has no point. Seeking to avoid this realization, he attempts to find ways to deprive himself of this knowledge, including the aforementioned alcoholism, suicide, HappyZac (not to be confused with that other well-known SSRI), and other delightful distractions of modern life.

My biggest problem with the book, surprisingly, was not its pretentious nature, which I enjoyed, as it was perfect typecasting for the narrator. Rather, I didn't accept the nature of the character development. Most people will read this and understand what I mean, so I won't spoil the story. Suffice it to say, the results of spilling coffee on your keyboard are not what he was looking for, and the suggestion that this somehow led him where he ended up was a bit farcical and forced.

I must also confess a sort of bitter ambivalence toward the book as a result of having seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind recently, and the Conclusion of the book had a rather Deus ex Machina result that left me feeling a bit like Alice. The only thing that I could connect to was the movie, and I felt that was unfortunate.

A good book, well worth the afternoon it takes to read it. Read it, share it, pass it on. Don't consider it an instruction manual, though. Unless you are into that kind of thing. In which case, Backa!
Harkius

How I Became Stupid is, at best, irrevocably, an enigma. It's charming, frustrating, playful, dark, whimsical yet damning, and - overall - difficult to sum its total without breaking down its parts. However; it is easy to define just what Stupid promises - or at least appears to: a witty read, rife with witticisms with which you can wittily impress upon your friends...in wit, of course. It is a cult hit after all. Yet, How I Became Stupid does manage to defy the many self-satisfied presumptions that the oft-elitist genre of alternative reading is so apt to fall to.

Despite the delightful cover and promise of a rather light read - Martin Page gives us anything but; the book, though short, is densely compact and wholly absorbing. Beneath its quick and sharp charm lies a more nuanced truth that reaches near apocalyptic suppositions. Yet, despite the "runaway train" effect that the acerbic story impresses, Martin Page dismisses the social pessimism that his character embraces in favor, however grudgingly, of a more optimistic outlook. By pointing out all the logical fallacies of such black thinking with spry humor - most especially when spiraling in the deepest depths of human misery - we are able to be left only amused and so then embrace the positive message written behind the (comically) dark events.

The premise of the book is that its main character, Antoine, believes that intelligence leads only to sufferance. With this conclusion, he embarks on a twisted odyssey to find happiness - by becoming stupid. This takes him everywhere from alcoholism, to suicide, to worldly success, and beyond.
It stands true that, throughout the novel, there remains a constant fracture between the author's stance and that of his characters. Page maintains a view pitted against the banalities of idiocy even as Antoine yearns for it. It is in this way that Page celebrates most completely the intellectualism that Antoine rebels against. Yet, then again, nothing is safe from Martin Page's exacting gaze and he is quick to point out the banality, of another sort, that intellectuals are prone to as well:

Rodolphe was a pure product of the education system and could expect to be appointed as an assistant professor within the next two years, to be promoted to university professor in about seven years, and to die in perfect obscurity some sixty years later, leaving a body of work that would influence generations of termites.

In fact the deprecation of vacuity - both of the stupid and knowledgeable kind - is a running theme of Stupid. It offers instead a celebration of true intelligence that imparts whole-hearted optimism. True optimism is Stupid's highest exaltation in antithesis to its exploration in the pessimism and destruction of the self.

Antoine is trapped in a parable covering the plight of the common man; even as he feels most estranged from them. He looses this commonality, most ironically, when he conforms to the two-dimensional caricatures of his world, and so separates himself from us, the reader; the most three-dimensional personage involved. In this greatest contradiction Page makes his greatest conclusion: society, optimism, pessimism, are all to be accepted in their edifying, self-gratifying, vacuous, and meaningful splendor.

Upon reading the back of this book, I just knew it was for me. If you've ever thought that intelligence is a curse and that 'ignorance is bliss' is the truest statement ever - then this book is definitely for you!

The poor guy that is the lead character feels that intelligence is a curse and begins a quest to be like everyone else. You will feel bad for him at how quickly his attempt to be an alcoholic fails. And you will laugh at the absurdity of the suicide class. And then he really gets serious about his quest for stupidity and the cheeky passages wilmake you cackle aloud.

I enjoyed this book, however I thought it could have been executed a tad bit better. But if you feel like you are of a rare breed (intelligent in a non-intelligent world) then you will appreciate this book.

This is supposedly an international best seller, but it didn't work for me at all. Perhaps I am too old for it.
After attempting to become an alcoholic and a suicide, our hero decides to become "stupid" to help adjust to modern life. The plot that happens after this is predictable and the ending comes out of nowhere almost as a deus ex machina (which the author, in his introductory chapter,promises will not happen.) Sorry, but I'd suggest skipping this one.

Martin Page's How I Became Stupid is an amusing story of one man's quest to remove the shackles of intellect by any means necessary so that he might finally live comfortably among the un-inquiring masses. For those who can genuinely relate to this plight and wish to find a fictional kindred spirit, this book will probably not deliver. Part of the humor in the book, which could easily be read in a single sitting, is the main character's hypocrisy - so assured is he of his intellectual superiority that he retains most of the vices of those who he looks down upon while justifying them in an overly intellectualized form of snobbery.

The book starts out strongly, with his asking a drunkard at a bar for instruction on how to obtain alcoholism and his cleverly written seminar on suicide. The first half of the book is certainly the most entertaining half, as the rest delves into the "real" world of capitalism where the laughs become few. The ending is resolved rather suddenly, albeit in an amusing way, with a dues ex machina device, which is ultimately to the story's detriment, unfortunately. Still, its short length makes it a quick and painless read which will garner a few laughs, and it's a good book to share with overly-intellectual friends.